I am looking for ways to announce your business to friends and family. Would you send a mass mailer? Take cupcakes with cards to local businesses?

I am an at-home business so I don't have a store front to do a grand opening. --- I will get there eventually.

Thanks for your help and ideas!

I started doing cakes at home until it became to much. At the end, I was averaging about 6-10 cakes a week and it was difficult doing that with 2 toddlers runnning around. I recently partnered up with a friend and have had our bake shop open for 3 weeks now. Anyways, if you have facebook, that worked great for me when I was at home. Just start a group for your business and invite a few friends and then their friends will notice and so on and so on.

I've opened a part-time business recently and I'm doing the same thing, trying to get my name out there. I made some cupcakes and took them around to local children's shops, bridal shops, florists and left some brochures and business cards. They really appreciated getting the cupcakes. I pass out brochures to everyone. I also joined a local chamber of commerce, had a booth at their business expo and attended functions they've had. I've joined facebook, got on wedding wire, and recently got added to the yellow pages (which took forever but that's a different story). I'm beginning to get calls from people I don't know that found me because someone gave them a brochure or they found me on weddingwire. I'm also going to the bridal expo in January and I'm taking out ads in some local upscale magazines. Right now, advertising is my biggest cost but it is working to get my name out there. Good Luck!

What I did was I created a free webpage at Weebly.com it's very easy to built. Advertised it on facebook and give it out to all my friends for them to show to their friends.

Thanks guys! I do have a facebook page. And I have gotten a few calls from people coming across the page. But mostly its been word of mouth from my friends to their friends and so on. Thanks for the help. I will have to check out wedding wire, I hadn't heard of that.

Some people put sticker on their car with the name of business, webpage address and phone number.